Sacrificing her well-being amidst an overload of work, Momoe unveils her journey of Zen discovery and its seamless integration into her eating routine, guiding her towards greater fulfillment in life.
Your mindset while eating is important
Nick: Would you like to share a little background and share your journey to becoming a Zen eating guide?
Momoe: Of course, so I am sharing how to eat now, which is like conscious eating. But to come here, I had a long journey. I have been meditating for 10 years based on Zazen meditation and other many types of meditation.
And I was born in the countryside of Japan, with mountain like North countryside of Japan and my grandparents have a mountain and surrounded by wild vegetables, wild plants. And without knowing, they have this connectedness, they have this connected life. I grew up in Tokyo, so I was always admiring them like how beautiful their life is.
But I'm having this urban life which I like. So I decided to work for a wellness department at a luxury resort hotel in Japan. And I was happy that I was able to have wellness moment with my clients, guests at that resort. But at the same time I was working too much and I got burned out, I had to quit my job because of my health condition.
That was challenging for me, I was working for wellness but I didn't have time to take care of my own wellness. Then I moved to India and decided to live in India for one and half year to two years. I learned traditional Indian medicine called ayurveda, and Indian nutrition—how to make balanced diet for your body, according to your body condition, your body type, which was fascinating.
And the reason that I started learning about this nutrition was that my mother overcame her chronic illness, which is called rheumatoid arthritis by changing her diet to healthier, vegetable-oriented or less artificial things.
So I realized that what you eat and health are so strongly related. So I thought that nutrition is something really important for me and for everyone. That's why I went into nutrition and healthy diet. But I realized that as I became more healthy diet geek, I realized that I was far from happy state, because I was so judgmental, like, I cannot eat this, and you should not eat this.
At that point, I realized that how to eat or your mindset while eating is as as important as what you eat. So I came back to this meditational approach which I started when I lost my father by a helicopter accident, at the age of 14, I was 14 years old.
So I discovered Zen and Zen helped me so much, so I integrated Zen and this eating, and I started sharing how to do it, how to practice it with people, with companies. So that's how I started Zen eating.